Each week, Digital Spy rounds up the biggest mobile gaming releases with reviews and trailers. This week brings players a classic arcade reboot, a microbial trip through a dolphin, the latest mobile game from Mistwalker and an odd little game that's simply a ball to play.

Back in arcades Zaxxon was a true classic, as one of the first games to simulate 3D graphics with its isometric viewpoint. Sega has brought the arcade series back for its newest mobile release, though Zaxxon Escape bears little resemblance to its namesake. Instead of an isometric space shooter, the mobile game has players navigating narrow corridors that is more similar to Return of the Jedi's climactic Death Star escape. Players must tilt and twist the smartphone in order to align their ship to fit through obstacles, occasionally swiping the screen to change corridors or tapping to clear debris.

While utterly unlike the original game in any discernible way, Zaxxon Escape makes for a fun ride in its own right as the speed increases every second you survive. It isn't a game you'll likely want to play in public though, as the ridiculous device rotations will garner more than a few questionable looks. Playing on a tablet is also not the best choice, as the bulkier device makes quick rotations more difficult. However, smartphone players with quick reflexes will find a lot to enjoy careening through Zaxxon Escape's corridors at full speed.

Originally released as a Windows Phone exclusive, Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin makes its way to iOS devices. Players control a four-tentacled creature as it navigates the insides of a dolphin-man's body. The controls are marvellously intuitive, as a simple tap launches one of the tentacles to latch onto the walls of whatever gut or organ you are currently navigating. Each tap sends out the next tentacle, creating a surprisingly smooth experience as the creature crawls through passages, often fighting against the current of bodily fluids.

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Other creatures also inhabit the dolphin's body, and with another simple tap your creature can launch a tentacle to snatch its eye and devour it. Collecting all of them leads to one of three stars in each level, with the others rewarded for survival and meeting a time limit. The difficulty level ramps up quite fast, making it no small feat to complete each level, much less collect any of the stars, which may be intimidating for some players. Thankfully, the challenge comes from smart design rather than frustrating controls, and those willing to brave it will find an incredibly rewarding mobile experience.

Blade Guardian is Mistwalker's second attempt at a mobile game, with the famed RPG maker now taking a stab at the tower defense genre. Maps are wide open, allowing you to build defensive walls that can funnel enemies before they reach your base. These walls also allow you to place your turrets, requiring defensive planning before you can place your actual defenses. However, it helps to be flexible in your planning, as enemies can spawn from multiple camps across the map.

This is where the titular guardians come into play. Occasionally, flying balloon-like enemies will appear, requiring you to tap them furiously to make them pop. The guardian they release then fights on your side, attacking the nearest enemy spawn point and any enemies that get in the way for a slow but effective offensive twist. The real power of the guardians, though, lies in their ability to roll into a ball, giving you complete control by tilting the device to destroy anything it touches. Unfortunately, that does mean everything, which includes your own defenses, making them more of a double-edged sword than a trump card. Without the guardian units, Blade Guardian would be a fairly generic entry in the tower defense genre. With their inclusion, the game becomes more interesting, but they are arguably more trouble than they are worth, making Blade Guardian difficult to recommend except to the most stalwart strategy fan.

King Oddball is a fitting title for this bizarre twist on the destructive physics puzzle genre made popular by Angry Birds. Rather than a slingshot and birds you have King Oddball, a giant floating boulder wearing a crown and wielding a disproportionately long tongue. That tongue is used to fling rocks to defeat the defending military of Earth, which includes helicopters, tanks, infantry and concrete military bases with conveniently placed explosives.

The controls take a simple one tap approach. King Oddball will swing in the air, building up the next projectile rock's momentum, and you must time your tap to release the stone on a trajectory of destruction. The rocks have a tendency to bounce, allowing for creative ricochet shots often with surprisingly effective results. The game is pure destructive fun, but that purity comes at a cost. There is no score, leaderboard, or even a level star system, which may turn off some players who want a record of their gaming accomplishments. Those who don't mind that caveat will find a lot to enjoy in the game's creative physics puzzles and bizarre sense of humor, which could become as much a motivation to replay levels as a high score ever was.